Winnie-the-Pooh and Queen Elizabeth not only share 90th birthdays this year, but they also meet for the first time in a new book.
Titled Winnie-the-Pooh and the Royal Birthday, the new story written for the Queen, follows Pooh and his friends as they travel to London to give presents to the Queen for her 90th birthday. Pooh devises a poem that is so fire that Christopher Robin insists that Eeyore, Piglet and himself need to take Pooh to Buckingham Palace so Pooh can read it to the Queen. Upon arriving in London, the four friends do the touristy thing and ride on the top of a red double-decker bus and even visit the lion in Trafalgar Square.
Hopefully, the future King is old enough to know how insanely cool it is that he has a cameo in the story. The Prince isn't named, but is described as a little boy, "much younger than Christopher Robin and almost as bouncy as Tigger," seen following the Queen when she eventually appears in the story. Piglet even gives him a balloon! And no, nobody blinks an eye at a pig standing on his hind legs giving the Prince a balloon while a yellow bear recites a poem to the Queen close by.
The story is only available online and can be read right here, complete with artwork inspired by E.H. Shepard's work on the original Pooh stories written by A.A. Milne back in the day.
For those too lazy to read the 28-page story where pictures are more than half of it, Oscar-winner Jim Broadbent (Harry Potter, Bridget Jones's Diary) recorded an audiobook that Disney matched with the visuals from the story in a 17-minute video. The video can be viewed below.
"I have been a fan of Winnie-the-Pooh since I was a boy, in fact I named my very first and much loved teddy 'Pooh,'" Broadbent said to The Telegraph, "I've loved being part of this story to celebrate the Queen's 90th birthday and Winnie-the-Pooh's 90th anniversary; it's been an honour."
This must be a heck of a birthday gift for the Queen. She was a fan of the stories when she was a kid. In fact, the first appearance of Pooh, in a collection of stories called Teddy Bear and Other Songs From "When We Were Very Young," was dedicated to the recently-born Princess when it was published in 1926.
Originally starting off in poems and popular stories for children, Disney acquired the rights to Winnie-the-Pooh in 1961. Aside from getting rid of those dastardly hyphens, Disney re-designed the bear and made him the star of many short films and movies. Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) took home the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film (posthumously awarded to Walt Disney) and has its own ride in multiple Disney theme parks. Disney is currently planning the first live-action Winnie-the-Pooh movie about an adult Christopher Robin returning to the Hundred-Acre Woods.
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